I have an app I really like, but the developers have gone down a really bad route. It's been turned into a horrible web app that is now slow to load, clunky to use, and has adopted many iOS UI things.
I have the last known version before they went this horrible way, and they apparently don't care about their plummeting store ratings, and adamant they aren't going back.
I have prevented auto update of the app, but I also want to remove notification in the Play store (and anywhere else) that an update even exists for this app. Is this possible without root?
I am thinking perhaps changing the APK signing key, or package name, or some other way of mangling the app? or some easier way?
Just for reference resigning with a different key will make the app stop appearing in Play Store updates.
I will come out an name and shame UnTappd for not caring what their users want or think about thieir (un)responsive web app garbage.
If anyone wants the original last native APK (2.8.4), I have it, and I also have a resigned on that won't try and update via the play store.
Original (signed by Untappd):
http://hostracon.com/uploads/1763759451.Untappd Discover Beer_v2.8.4_apkpure.com.apk
Modified with new cert:
http://hostracon.com/uploads/439004733.untapped284 alt sign.apk
Hope someone finds them useful.
Related
I went through my Heros settings and found that in "menu>settings>applications" theres a check-box named "unknown sources" which while checked allows install of non-Market applications.
Why is there such a setting? Since Android OS is open-sourced, isn't the whole point that everybody should be able to upload apps to the Marketplace without Google having to accept them first? If it is like that, why wouldn't all apps be on the market place?
The only reason i see for this is so that you would be able to install apps that Google wont allow, but if they don't allow the app, why would they have a setting so you can install it?
Please tell my why there is such a setting.
Thank you /nofowuw
my only guess is that that setting is equivalent to a Release of Liability form. Any damage caused by apps installed from external sources, not on the Market where it can be rated and commented upon (maybe filtered too?) cannot thus be blamed on Google?
nofowuw said:
Why is there such a setting? Since Android OS is open-sourced, isn't the whole point that everybody should be able to upload apps to the Marketplace without Google having to accept them first? If it is like that, why wouldn't all apps be on the market place?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The fact that Android is open source has absolutely *nothing* to do with the Market. There are many reasons why a developer might not want to put their apps on the Market - a core consideration might be that they want to sell their apps, but paid apps are not available in their region, so perhaps they want to use a different distribution method.
Similarly, in some regions, Android phones do not ship with the Market app at all, presumably because Google charge a licence to ship their closed source apps.
Regards,
Dve
google does not check the apps in the market. every app comes to the market, but there is the self-controlling mechanism: if several users complain about an app (and rate it bad) it will be taken out of the market. also you wouldn't install an app that has 1 star and several warnings in the comments. this way you can be pretty (not 100%) sure that the app from the market won't harm your phone. last but not least through the market it can be tracked down to the dev who created the app.
now if you download an app or someone sends it to you all that is gone. no user ratings, no comments, no dev. this is why you have to check that box when you want to install apps from other sources...
ohh, ok... umm.
So how do you install these applications? Just put the application-file on the SD and the phone does the rest? Is there any community that host a library of apps to download?
Since i live in a non-full market region and cant buy apps, i guess this can be usefull for me
I tried searching but no app for Android. (other than the one by google)
I think the google voice app by google inc is good. But i just wish it had a character count. It messes up the texts when you go over 160 and it sends it as multiple and they dont even arrive in the right order to the destination.
Also i wish it wouldn't hang every once in a while when i press send. It's like its trying to send but it just hangs there. wish they could fix that. A timer there would be nice. I have to stop it by using task manager.
And be able to use have themes.
If there is an app that could replace the current that would be cool. If anyone knows of one that works just post me a link. I tried searching but no success..
If there is a mod for the current google app that adds these features that would be awesome. OR if there is a good API to access the google voice. Or a project that is currently being worked on. That would be cool too.
I have been looking for one for a while too, I tired pairing it with text plus and textfree but recent changes have lead to no avail. I guess we can't complain to much for what we are getting but oon the hand textplus is an amazingly beautiful app and I just want that level of design and features from Google, I don't feel it's unfair to look for Google to pick up their game. If any one knows of anything please post, I feel like a lot of people would appreciate it.
AFAIK Google does not have any API's for Voice, which is why you can't find anyone aside from Google with an app. One thing a lot of people don't realized is that just because Google made Android open source, doesn't mean they have to make all the apps for it open source also.
Is there anywhere we can go to request the release of an API or at least a redesign of the app?
I installed the black market alpha .apk on my phone and it works perfectly. tonight i downloaded Easy Voice Recorder Pro on my phone from BMA which is supposed to be 3.99 from the play store and on BMA it had the price crossed out through the number with a line and i downloaded it without a problem. the app opens and works fine. Here's The Conundrum. when i try to make a recording it stops itself after one second and says could not find market license!! so what i don't understand is, what is the point of black market alpha even though it does work and gets the app if the app still knows you don't have the license and doesn't give you permission?
i should also add the fact that i noticed the free version, easy voice recorder(without the pro) works by having advertisements and if you are rooted and use ad away you can just have no ads anyway. although there also seems to be some other limitations such as recording time length etc
but really my question stands, what is the point of BMA if the app can still not find license permission? perhaps easy voice recorder pro is atypical of most things and most other pay apps don't have this issue off of BMA but i was rather shocked. the bottom line is this app in particular still wont function even if obtained off of BMA
This is against the rules. Xda doesn't allow threads that deal with, or distribute warez ( paid stuff for free ). Please make an effort to read the xda rules
Reported
i should also add that other PAY apps i've obtained off of BMA haven't had this issue and this is the first i've run into. but it gave me serious pause for concern. should i expect more apps to follow suit in the future? if an app developer is aware of this and can simply make the app need the market license so it wont work if obtained from BMA so you have to pay for it from the play store anyway then i would expect at some point the BMA would just become completely useless and redundant
my apologies. i was under the impression that using BMA was in the same vein as rooting and apps that use SU perms. i'm quite sure that ad away which uses root SU perms would be just as frowned upon since it blocks ads from apps
No its not the same. Pirating payed for apps is not the same as blocking ads that no one clicks on anyway. You will find not help here on this. Thread closed.
Sent from the Bat Cave
Was just wondering what peoples thoughts were on using the Android Licensing copy protection in their apps? Do you use it and do you spend a lot of time on it or have any creative ways to help enforce it?
As we all know any kind of drm will always be cracked but I just wanted to know if people found it worthwhile to have..
I'm using In-app-billing, because I found that even licensed apps can be copied.
And yes, all apps can be cracked eventually, but most of the publishers of cracked apps remove them if you ask to. So that's what I'm gonna do!
Sent from my Nexus 4 running Android 4.2 JB
I don't like license checks that force you to be online, but I do like to have 'something' in place...
Recently I started working with some OEMs in India who wanted to pre-load my apps on their devices. Very exciting obviously, but I didn't know if I could trust them as I'd never heard of them.
So what I did was get the app to load a web page on one of my servers off the screen (9000%x...) so that it couldn't be seen. The page it linked to was empty, but if I wanted to I could modify the code to include a redirect that would send it to another page. Then in my 'onPageOverride' event I just said if URL = 'stopapp.htm' then do whatever it was I wanted to do.
What I actually have it do in that event is to fill the entire screen with that web page. The user then can't interact with the app underneath, but they get a message that I can create at the time saying 'This app has been illegally distributed' or whatever else I want to say. I can even forward them on to the download page if I want this way.
This works well too because if the user isn't online, the page just doesn't load and nothing happens. But if I want to stop offline use as well I can save a file in File.DirInternal and have the app check for that. 'SwitchOff.txt'. They get caught once, then they can't use the app.
Obviously this doesn't work quite like a license check, but what you *could* do with it is to have the app pop up with a message to people using an old version that's not updated. That's probably downloaded off of some file sharing site, so you could then just keep pestering them to 'update' and send them to the Play Store to do so. You can also check how many of the users on that version of your app are legitimate by looking at your Play Developer Console.
One thing to note is that the redirect URLs you use will need to be different in every version of your app that you release.
Hope this helps someone! I wish I'd done it sooner, one of my apps is all over the web grrrr...
pretty much the same as what I'm doing atm except I just ping a server in the background and display a popup if the result meets certain conditions.. I don't disable the app either as I can't be 100% certain it's pirated, instead I display a "scary" popup saying if they're using a pirated copy this is illegal etc.. your average user won't know how the popup was generated so it should be enough to make them think "someone" is onto them and go the proper route.. With the added bonus a genuine user can just press ok and carry on using the app
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4
Currently, none of my apps use licensing.
For one of my paid apps, about 5% of the downloads are from non-Google Play sources, meaning, I'm not seeing any revenue from those 5%.
There is an Android API, that allows developers to see which platform their app was downloaded from. So, I've been thinking about adding that hidden feature to my apps and maybe do something fun with it. But, haven't got around to it yet. My thinking has been that if somebody downloaded a pirated copy of my app, then they probably weren't going to pay for it in the first place. And, hopefully, they will tell their friends about it and maybe one of them will actually purchase it through Google Play.
I already have all my licensing code in place and commented out. Since my app is pretty new I want to see how it does before adding licensing. Since the app is free and income is from IAP its not too bad. I'd only turn on licensing in the next release if I see a pressing need for it.
Currently, none of my apps use licensing.
Hello. I recently bought a Huawei P40 Lite, without GMS and installed the apps using googlefier. Everything goes well except some errors that are fixed by swiping and blocking them, and one bigger issue: location. Some local apps (the phone is for my mom so she has a lot of shopping apps for local supermarkets with discounts, cards, vouchers etc) require you to set your location through google, so instead of the app showing the map and allowing you to choose your store, you're stuck at a "Google Play services are updated" screen. Is there any fix for this?
How it looks on my P20 Lite (with factory GMS)
How it looks on my P40 Lite (with googlefier GMS)
Also, does anyone know any better solution of installing the google services? As said, this phone is for my mom and I really don't want to have to fix something every week, so I'm up to even root and mess with things so I can have a more permanent fix.
Welcome to XDA
Yes, well... no idea what the solution is but there's no way I leave that junkware run on my phone.
With a user like that always keep in mind it may be malware, a virus or rootkit causing it.
An Android is only as secure as its user...
blackhawk said:
Welcome to XDA
Yes, well... no idea what the solution is but there's no way I leave that junkware run on my phone.
With a user like that always keep in mind it may be malware, a virus or rootkit causing it.
An Android is only as secure as its user...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well it's not junk or malware. It's a genuine app from the playstore for a supermarket chain named Lidl. She's had it for months, you basically get a qr code and you have to scan that code at the cash register to get some discounts. The app shows her each week what products have discounts and what products are gonna have discounts next week. The app is legit.
As for the user, yeah I agree my mom isn't the most careful out there but i managed to teach her to not install or press any buttons and everytime she gets a weird message or notification she comes to me to figure out what it is. Even when a normal app requires a permission, for example "facebook requires permission to take pictures", she comes to me, so I'm pretty sure she'll be fine with it.
Is there any proper way of installing GMS without having these types of issues even if it involves rooting or god knows what else? At the price of this phone there's nothing better than it and I don't really want to downgrade to a bad samsung just for that.
Just because it's on Playstore doesn't make it safe
FB? Bah-ha-ha-ha.... is pure social malware.
Purveyors of disinformation and far, far worse.
No way that be on my phone. I punched out of FB 13 years ago after a month... the puppet cut the strings.
Meh, it's a lick on you... do what you will, but actions have consequences.
blackhawk said:
Just because it's on Playstore doesn't make it safe
FB? Bah-ha-ha-ha.... is pure social malware.
Purveyors of disinformation and far, far worse.
No way that be on my phone. I punched out of FB 13 years ago after a month... the puppet cut the strings.
Meh, it's a lick on you... do what you will, but actions have consequences.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not that deep. Like I said, all she does is talk about flowers, plants and work-related subjects. I taught her how not to fall in the hands of scammers and how she should come and show me everytime she gets any weird request. She doesn't download any apps without me, doesn't access weird websites, i think it's safe enough for a mature person.
Yes, I know that it isn't safe just because it's on the playstore, I'm just trying to tell you that it's a legit app, developed my the supermarket chain that has over 11k stores in Europe and there isn't any sensitive information apart from her name and a qr code that she has to scan, instead of the typical physical discount card.
On another note, since the topic has been moved to another category, does anybody have any idea on how to fix my issue?
@goldieczr did you find a solution?
I've got the exact same problem on my Hisense a6l.
I got these files (in the rar) from an official seller. With these you can install google service and magisk.
Both files are executable zips that can be opend. All you need is the password from the text file.
Same thing with the installation, just copy paste the passwords when ask.